Where one door shuts, another opens… – Sunday, January 01, 1960
There is maxim quoted in Don Quixote which this day somehow suggests: “Where one door shuts, another opens. . ..”1 We come to an end and find a beginning.
Often, we worry about arriving at an end, with too little faith in what follows. In any year, in any day, we are given to worrying about much that has happened, much that hasn’t happened, much that doesn’t happen. With problems, with disappointments, and sometimes in sorrow, the question comes to troubled hearts; “What am I going to do now?”
The answer inevitably is, continue to do what needs to be done, what can be done; to do the necessary things, and have the faith to know that life will unfold, as it has, as it continues to do. “Where one door shuts, another opens. . .”2—and we have to have the faith to move through the open door and face the facts.
If we have obligations, we must do our best to meet them; if debts, we must do our best to pay them. If we have duties, we must do them.
If we have limitations and impairments, we must learn to live with them, or above them. And as to old errors, we must learn from them, and repent from the errors of the past—but not waste life in brooding or wishing we had done differently.
The fact is we didn’t do differently, and this is where we are, and this is where we must begin—with a reaching out in reasonableness and righteousness, with a willingness to try, with a willingness to work, with a willingness to leave the past with as little regret as possible; to repent and improve, with gratitude, with courage, with conviction, with dignity, with faith, and with a resolve to face facts, and to improve upon the past.
This is where we are— “Where one door shuts, another opens. …” We come to an end and find a beginning. And here some words of Dale Wasserman are recalled in closing:
“To fight the unbeatable foe
And never to stop dreaming or fighting—
This is man’s privilege
And the only life worth living.”2
1 Maxim quoted in Don Quixote – Cervantes.
2 Dale Wasserman, in “I, Don Quixote.”
December 27, 1959
Broadcast Number 1,585